


TARDIS troubles

by YvonneSilver



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YvonneSilver/pseuds/YvonneSilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ten left Rose and TenToo in the parallel universe, he provided them with a TARDIS seed. Now the seed is finally full-grown and ready to take Rose and TenToo on new adventures. However Rose is having some trouble getting used to the new TARDIS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	TARDIS troubles

The new TARDIS took some getting used to. Rose opened the door a crack and peeked outside. She'd already learned that with the new box, there's no flinging open the doors and striding out into the world. She'd learned that the hard way when it decided to materialize behind a subway tunnel door. It took Johns lightning reflexes to pull her back before she stepped onto the electrified lines.

She'd been so anxious to travel again, see the stars once more with her new Doctor, that she hadn't thought about how things might be different. Things had already been too different. Or too normal really. She'd seen a side of the Doctor she never expected. She had never thought him capable of living as John Smith (identity provided courtesy of Mickey's hacking skills), temping agent in London. That was a side of him she hardly recognised. At least traveling through space-time again had brought back the old Doctor, the one she used to know.

Yet things were still different. For one thing, there was the TARDIS. Grown from a seed of the old one, it had started out as a tiny grey cylinder, slowly growing in size until, after a couple of painstakingly boring years, it had reached maturity. But it wasn't the TARDIS she'd known. This was a completely new creature, whimsical and sometimes dangerous, as their first trip had proven. It had a tendency to materialize in strange places and orientations. Its chameleon circuit worked, but instead the gravity system seemed to be wonky.

Somehow, John seemed to think all this was funny. He was already bonding with the new TARDIS, cooing over its tantrums, laughing away the problem of the extra rooms spawning haphazardly throughout its interior. For the first time, Rose was getting lost inside the TARDIS. Sometimes, she felt like the new TARDIS distinctly disliked her, though of course John waved that away nonchalantly. "It's just a baby Rose, be patient." He'd say. "You just need to get to know each other." Only at her very persistent demands did he get round to fixing the gravity system, so that at least there was gravity inside. Zero-G seems like fun at first, and John was certainly having a blast, but Rose liked to be grounded in her own home. Not that there weren't still issues.

Rose looked outside or, more accurately, down. Yep, the TARDIS had managed to materialize on its side again. Rose sighed. The thought of going on a trip alone, to get the chance to bond, as John had suggested, had seemed like a good idea, but now Rose was just feeling more and more frustrated. At least there was a ropeladder down this time. She sat down on the floor, and carefully brought her feet outside and onto the first rung of the stepladder. Her stomach lurched nauseatingly as gravity changed its grip on her, but she held on tight and found herself safely at the top of the ladder.

She hurried down the ladder as best as she could - it had been forever since she'd used a rope ladder - and only looked back up when she was safely on the ground. The TARDIS had taken on the appearance of an old-fashioned earth tree-house. Whether or not the tree was part of its camouflage, Rose couldn't really tell. All she knew was that the wooden door above her didn't lead to your usual tree hut, but to a spaceship unlike any other.

She sighed. Maybe that was the problem. She missed the old TARDIS, the one that had originally whisked her away from her home the first time, the one that had been her constant home even when her Doctor had changed. Everything was almost imperceptibly different in this parallel universe, and John was not completely the same as the Doctor she known, but the thought of having the TARDIS back again had given her hope that things could go back to the way they had been. And traveling through space and time again had helped, but this TARDIS was just not what she had expected it to be. Maybe she should stop blaming the new TARIS for that though. Give it a chance.

She might as well start now. Rose turned away and looked around her. The place looked remarkably like earth from her time. She was in the middle of a quiet neighbourhood. The tree she'd climbed down from stood beside a white house, and all along the silent road were little plots just like the one she was standing on. Two houses down, two human-looking children were playing on a tyre swing, but apart from that, it was quiet. She'd put the coordinates on random, so why had the TARDIS brought her here?

She was just  about to go over to the two children to ask where she was, when there was a soft thud nearby. She looked around warily, but she only found the source of the sound when she took a step forward and almost tripped over the package that had seemingly just appeared at her feet.

Her breath caught when she saw the familiar shade of blue of the package. It could only come from one person, it had to be, can only be. But it couldn’t be. He was on another world, no, another universe even. She looked up and down the street, but nothing else had changed in the streetscape. She crouched down and quickly scooped the package into her arms. The box was about the size of a football, but weighed less than she expected. She gripped it under one arm, and struggled back up the ropeladder as quickly as she could manage.

She hoisted herself inside, pushing the box in first and then squirming in flat on her belly as the gravity shifted to fit the console room again. She rolled over and sat up, pulling the package onto her lap. The box was a dusty blue, the exact shade that so often filled her dreams, tied closed with a bright yellow string that reminded her of swirling energies. She didn't want to get her hopes up, but she couldn’t help thinking… With shaking fingers, she untied the bow at the top of the package, lifted the flaps and looked inside.

It was empty. Even though she tried not to get her hopes up, Rose felt disappointed. What kind of stupid joke was this? She lifted the box over her head, about to throw it through the control room in pure frustration, when it shuddered in her hands. She was so surprised, she almost dropped it. Then she realized, she couldn't. The box was hovering above her head without her help holding it up. Rose looked up between her outstretched arms, confused. The box had lifted itself a little, and was hovering above her hands. Quickly, Rose got up off the floor and backed away from the box that was now floating at eye-height.

The box made a humming noise, a surprisingly familiar humming noise, and suddenly a glowing yellow liquid spouted up out of the top. Except it wasn't liquid, or certainly didn't behave like it. It swirled upwards in elegant loops, shimmering brightly in the soft green TARDIS light. TARDIS light! The moment Rose recognised it, it exploded outwards, snaking its way around the console room in complete silence. A glowing tendril touched down just beside where Rose was standing, and suddenly the floor bounded up. Rose looked down and found she was standing on the bottom step of a shallow ladder. When she looked up again, everything had changed.

In front of her was the TARDIS control room. Not the new one, the old one, exactly as she remembered it. She clasped a hand to her mouth as she  took it all in - soft yellow light, brown sweeping arches like a system of roots, and in the centre the glowing column ending in the bulb with all the fiddly controls her Doctor so loved to play with. This was her home. "You found me." She whispered. The TARDIS whirred softly in response, and promptly turned of the gravity. Rose shrieked and grabbed onto the handrail only just in time. Laughing, she said. "But it's still new you. I get it." The TARDIS rumbled once more and gradually restored gravity to let Rose down. Safely back on her feet, she bounded up the steps and stroked lovingly over the edge of the control board. She looked upwards toward the green light in the column. "Lets go show John." The TARIS whirred, and, with the old whooshing sound Rose loved so much, set off across the universe.


End file.
